Gardening

[1COBearsfan]

We bought a house last fall that has a pretty big yard so we have room for some raised beds. We started with two 3' × '8 beds this year and will expand to four next year. I've got to add a self-watering system to the bottom of them and add stuff to add netting/black plastic. We're starting with a lot of salad greens, tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, beans, snap peas, peppers, & pumpkin.

There is a small strip on the east side of the house that will eventually be home to some fruit trees. We just need to remove the flowers, shrubs, & million pounds of decorative rock landscaping... That will be next summers project most likely. We'll probably plant apple, peach, & plum trees.

I'm also trying to get hollyhock flowers to grow, mostly because I need some dark colors mixes in with the light of our tulips. I've read that hollyhock is edible, has anyone tried it? I'm pretty curious.

We also have plans for a bunch of flower beds. I enlarged a bed that borders two sides of or back porch yesterday and planted a shit-ton of wildflowers that will attract bees, songbirds, & hummingbirds. I need to get about four more yards of planting soil though. I vastly underestimated how much soil I was going to use for all of the bedding we made. There will be at least two more wildflower beds, one of them will be just a variety of sunflowers, and one, maybe two, more decorative flower beds. Directly behind our bedroom I'm going to lay a small walking path of rock with a small tallgrass/wildflower mix on either side. There will be bee-friendly wildflowers mixed into that patch too. Long range plans are to have a beehive, hopefully my wife will agree that it's a good idea... What else?... Oh yea, I'm trying to germinate some moonflower and morning glory vines to climb various parts of the house. That'll add some more flair to the front and back of the house and the morning glory will be something else to attract hummingbirds.

Holy crap, that looks a little ridiculous now that I've written it all down. With any luck most of this will come to fruition and our yard will be like a jungle

 

[DC]

Take pics man and share your progress! Good luck!

 

[1COBearsfan]

We had our first salad from the garden today. And it tasted like a salad...

We've also done some more shit to the yard in the 3 or so weeks since the above post. I soaked and germinated sunflower, morning glory, moonflower, & birdhouse gourd seeds a few weeks ago. They just need to be hardened and planted. We made some room in a flower bed for the sunflowers and planted some strawberry plants today. Next weekend I'll plant a raspberry and blueberry plant somewhere, not exactly sure where but I'll figure it out eventually...

The wildflower seeds I put down in the extended flower bed along the porch border are growing really well so far. With those and some morning glory and moonflowers in the same bed we should have a shitload of wildlife around our porch all summer long.

I also found a small garter snake this afternoon, that was badass. Hopefully it takes care of some of the grasshoppers that are starting to appear

 

[Unannounced Fart]

Do you guys have problems with caterpillars? What do you do to get rid of them? I just noticed a couple in my garden and they're on the tomato plants. I don't want to use any pesticides, and I don't really want to kill them. Perhaps just relocating them as I find them?

 

[1COBearsfan]

Relocating may work but there are probably a lot more that you don't see. There has to be a beneficial bug or bird that eats them that is also not harmful to your garden.

 

[HeHateMe]

Tilled about 500 sq feet of plots saturday. my body is rekt

 

[Scoot26]

Tilled about 500 sq feet of plots saturday. my body is rekt

I did no where near as you this weekend, but did my own garden planting this weekend. I'm also tired as hell today. I think part of it is simply getting sunburned in the process though.

 

[brett05]

Tilled about 500 sq feet of plots saturday. my body is rekt

Can I borrow your roto?

I have my own 500 square feet, so far I have done about 200 of it in about 4-5 hours.

I'm using one of those torque tillers

 

[HeHateMe]

Can I borrow your roto?

I have my own 500 square feet, so far I have done about 200 of it in about 4-5 hours.

I'm using one of those torque tillers

i rented mine for 24 hours from Home Depot. It was a double wide Mantis tiller and was $43.

make sure you give yourself about 45 minutes to clean it though. we have tons of random locust tree roots all over the yard and by the time I'd finished they were wrapped pretty tight, had to take the whole thing apart to get that shit clean.

 

[BlackHawkPaul]

I have an electric and gas powered tiller. The gas powered is a Troy Bilt and I can cruise through the two tiers so we can plant our bigger veggies.
I'm rebuilding a fence on the north side of our property, so the south side of the fence will get constant sun. I'm planning on building herb boxes and lining them with the longer plastic liners to keep the wood in decent shape, and to make cleaning in the fall easier.

 

[HeHateMe]

I have an electric and gas powered tiller. The gas powered is a Troy Bilt and I can cruise through the two tiers so we can plant our bigger veggies.
I'm rebuilding a fence on the north side of our property, so the south side of the fence will get constant sun. I'm planning on building herb boxes and lining them with the longer plastic liners to keep the wood in decent shape, and to make cleaning in the fall easier.

what kind of wood are you using for the boxes?

 

[BlackHawkPaul]

what kind of wood are you using for the boxes?

I haven't decided that yet.
Probably something light weight that is a tad durable that I can treat if possible, that's why I want to build it around the hard plastic planters. That way I won't have to deal with too much moisture collecting at the bottom of the soil (going to drill drainage ports).
If you have recommendations, go for it. I've been looking at ideas online on staggering boxes 2 by 2.

I was probably going to attempt something similar to the picture above.

 

[HeHateMe]

I haven't decided that yet.
Probably something light weight that is a tad durable that I can treat if possible, that's why I want to build it around the hard plastic planters. That way I won't have to deal with too much moisture collecting at the bottom of the soil (going to drill drainage ports).
If you have recommendations, go for it. I've been looking at ideas online on staggering boxes 2 by 2.

I was probably going to attempt something similar to the picture above.

Don't use treated wood. I build mine out of 3 inch thick cedar.

 

[BlackHawkPaul]

Don't use treated wood. I build mine out of 3 inch thick cedar.

Noted.
I'm building the fence and everything from the ground up. The old fence that divided the property line was rotting, and I live next to a large church. The church razed a house it owned on that property and the garage was butted up against my fence. My fence was damaged in the process, so all I have left are the support posts (4x4), and I need to install 5 more posts. I'm buying the fence in pieces and not prefab due to a few weird nooks on my property line. There's a very old concrete retaining wall separating the property line near the rear of the property, so I'm building a tad in front of it. It will help in the winter from the northerly winds drifting snow onto my drive.

 

[brett05]

Noted.
I'm building the fence and everything from the ground up. The old fence that divided the property line was rotting, and I live next to a large church. The church razed a house it owned on that property and the garage was butted up against my fence. My fence was damaged in the process, so all I have left are the support posts (4x4), and I need to install 5 more posts. I'm buying the fence in pieces and not prefab due to a few weird nooks on my property line. There's a very old concrete retaining wall separating the property line near the rear of the property, so I'm building a tad in front of it. It will help in the winter from the northerly winds drifting snow onto my drive.

You should politely ask the church to see the damage. I bet they pay for everything.

 

[BlackHawkPaul]

You should politely ask the church to see the damage. I bet they pay for everything.

Already done. They hauled away the old fence free of charge. It needed replacing.

 

[Spunky Porkstacker]

Cedar will hold up extremely well for planter boxes.

 

[Crystallas]

My water soldiers are already springing up. I planted them(or whatever you call inserting them into a pond) last year with no luck, and now I can count 8 of them peaking out of the water. Apparently they are great at filtering the water and converting oxygen.

 

[HeHateMe]

Cedar will hold up extremely well for planter boxes.

Another thing. I didn't do this three years ago with the boxes in my yard, but for the homestead, I built the boxes around 4 inch beams that i sunk 6 feet deep and quick-creted them in. These ******* will probably last a decade. I had to remove one of my yard boxes due to rot after about 3 years (still a good run) but those boxes were just screwed into eachother, not posts.

 

[Ares]

What does Gardening have to do with food.... food doesn't come from the ground